THE SEVEN LAST WORDS

FROM THE CROSS

*

A Course of

SEVEN LENTEN SERMONS

by

Rev. H. G. HUGHES

■ .* - •

JOSEPH F. WAGNER, Inc.

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS
FROM THE CROSS

A COURSE OF

SEVEN LENTEN SERMONS

BY

Rev. H. G. HUGHES

NEW YORK
JOSEPH F. WAGNER

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REMIGiUS LAFORT, S.T.D.

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JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY

Archbishop of Nenv York

New York, August 26, 1912

Copyright, 1913, bv Joseph F. Wagner, New York

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U- S. A.

CONTENTS

Page

The First Word i

The Second Word 9

The Third Word 16

The Fourth Word 23

The Fifth Word 29

The Sixth Word 36

The Seventh Word 42

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

The First Word

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” — St. Luke xxiii, 34.

SYNOPSIS. — The seven words spoken from the pulpit of the Cross — the
most illustrious from which any teacher of religion has ever spoken.
They sum up the lessons of the life of Jesus. In this Lenten Course we
are to consider them; taking into view the surroundings in which they
were spoken , looking especially at our divine Lord who spoke them.

The scenes and circumstances of the First Word. The scenes of the
Passion up to the Crucifixion. The_ meeting with His Mother; the
desolation and abandonment by His friends. Add the accumulation of
pains, and the sensitiveness of the sacred Humanity, Body and Soul;
endurance of past, present, future by memory, present infliction and
anticipation. And all this He endured from the creatures whom He was
saving by that very suffering. Not only their sins, but ours, the sins
of Catholics. Hence our attitude in these meditations must be that of
contrite and humble acknowledgment of our guilt.

The scene of the Crucifixion. Think of the contrast here between
human wickedness and divine goodness. The crowd watching and listen-
ing for the last acts and words of the condemned man.

How does Jesus behave ? What does He say? The Gospel words,
St. Luke xxiii, 33, 34. He “keep* saying, ‘ Father , forgive them, for they
know not what they do.’”

Exhortation to the unforgiving — listen and learn. Jesus might justly
have punished them in righteous anger. He thinks not of Himself. He
pleads for their pardon; He makes excuses for them. Not only for them,
but for us. We are in the same case. We have sinned against light and
knowledge. We must not forget our responsibility.

Hence the lesson of the First Word is most needful for us. It is the
lesson of forgiveness. It could not have been more forcibly urged. Shall
we not forgive our enemies ? Another motive, viz., reparation. It is
difficult and humiliating, but can we refuse Him? Personal appeal to
those present who may be unforgiving; consolation to the Heart of Jesus.

Of all the pulpits, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, from which,
throughout the world’s history, a teacher of religion has ever
spoken; whether from some lofty hill, or from the rostrum of a
public meeting-place, or in the intimate circle of a few chosen dis-
ciples, who should themselves afterwards teach to others what they
had heard, never was such a pulpit as that from which our divine
Lord and Master spoke His seven last words — the pulpit of the
Cross. He Himself had preached in the synagogues, in the fields,
on the mountains, from Peter’s boat, and in the circle of His chosen
apostles and disciples — but the pulpit of the Cross was the most
illustrious of all from which even He, whose words wherever spoken

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

were always words of life and light, had ever taught. For the
Cross itself was an eloquent sermon to the world; all the circum-
stances that surrounded the utterance from the Cross of those seven
words or sayings of the divine Teacher add their force to what He
said, and preach eloquently the lesson, summed up in these final
utterances of that wonderful life of the humiliation of the Son
of God of which the Cross was the culmination.

In this Lenten Course we are to meditate upon those seven last
words; and, in doing so, for the reasons I have just given, we
must take into our view the surroundings under which they were
spoken, fixing an attentive and loving gaze upon the last scenes of
the Passion of Jesus, and especially upon Him, the Central Figure
of it all.

The unjust trial was over; the iniquitous condemnation of the
Innocent One — His innocence admitted by the chief judge himself,
the representative of that imperial power which prided itself upon
its equal justice meted out to all — had been passed. The awful
punishment of the scourging had been inflicted; the Victim had
been loaded with the heavy Cross that was to be the instrument of
His death; He had slowly, painfully, laboriously dragged Himself
along the streets of Jerusalem beneath its overpowering weight,
stumbling and falling again and again, preceded and followed and
surrounded by a jeering mob full of hatred for the supposed enemy
of their national traditions, or angry at the failure of the Prophet’s
promises, as they thought, of a restoration of the temporal glory
of their country ; some of them led by that morbid curiosity, so dis-
honorable to humanity, which urges men and women to gloat over
scenes of violence and cruelty and death. There, too, vrere the
priests, who had compassed, as they imagined, the fall of Him who
had invaded their privileges; Pharisees, whose hypocrisy He had
exposed ; Sadducees, whose scepticism and unbelief He had reproved ;
Scribes, whose pride and formalism He had scourged; the Roman
soldiery, brutal, unfeeling, despising the angry feelings of the
Jewish crowd, wondering, perhaps, why they should make so much
ado about an obscure Galilean; yet themselves adding to His
agonies by their hard-hearted execution of their office ; their cynical
enjoyment of, or brutal indifference to, His sufferings; their satis-
faction of what was to them, most likely, a welcome excitement
somewhat out of the ordinary — something to talk about afterward
and laugh over amongst themselves. Such were among the

THE FIRST WORD

3

elements that added to the agonies of the Way of the Cross. To
these we must add that meeting — Oh, how sad? How full of
poignant agony! Hearts that loved with a love unspeakable, love
that was a keen sword of piercing pain stabbing the Hearts of the
Son and Mother as they met and looked each upon the other’s ex-
tremity of distress. We must add, too, the sorrow of desolation, the
^abandonment by His apostles, the denial of Peter, the accumulating
agonies, bodily and mental, that grew and multiplied from the time
that He gave Himself into the hands of His enemies until the
moment when He bowed His head and rendered up His spirit to
His heavenly Father.

Ah, mv brethren, one only of the pains suffered by Jesus, a single
shock of the heart-sorrow that He felt — what agony it would have
been to any of us, could we have felt it ; how would its bare remem-
brance afterward send a shuddering thrill of horror through our
being as long as we should live ! How does a man who has been in
prison live over again his dreadful hours of solitude, of penal
labor and disgrace, so that all life is clouded for him. For us
mercifully some dulness of perception comes, nerves and mind after
a time do not respond so acutely to the stimulus of pain or grief.
But with Jesus it was not thus. At every moment of His Passion
both mind and body were most keenly alive to the torture of each
moment. His human soul, raised up by its union with the Divinity
to a vast capacity of feeling and of sustaining untold tragedies of
anguish ; His sacred Body, likewise supported by the Divinity in
unresting, unmitigated sensitiveness to every pang, bore to the utter-
most, in the fullest degree, the immense weight of sorrow and the
extremest sharpness of physical pain. One upon the other came
these pains of body, continuous was the agony of soul. Knowledge
of the past, vivid consciousness of the present, foresight of the
future — all these gave to the sufferings of God-made man a charac-
ter of intensity, of overwhelming oppressiveness and acuteness which
no other son of man could experience. So, in a manner, our divine
Lord endured past and present and future pains all at once, by
memory and clear anticipation, as well as by instant present inflic-
tion. And all this He endured from His own creatures whom He
had come to save ; from the very ones for whose sake those suffer-
ings were being undergone. It was their sins, their blind folly, their
self-destroying wickedness, their obstinacy in sin, the future final
impenitence and eternal ruin of many of them that pierced His

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

sacred Heart to the quick. And, brethren, not only the sins, the
ingratitude, the blindness of those who actually condemned Him,
who actually nailed Him to the Cross ; who at the time of His
Sacred Passion jeered Him, scorned Him, despised Him; but still
morq the sins foreseen of those who afterwards, knowing who
He was and what He had done, and why He did it, — knowing too
the dreadful consequences of sin, yet should sin in spite of their
knowledge, should go on in sin, believing in their hearts, yet
practically denying Him and rejecting Him in their lives. Oh,
my brethren, true it is that Jesus grieved in His passion over
unbelievers, over those who should refuse the message of salvation
but do you not think that the keenest agony of all must have come
from His knowledge of the sins of Catholics, children of His
Church, special favorites of His Heart — of those who, sinning
against the light, sin more than others, whose base ingratitude is
worse, far worse, than the ignorant jeers of the Jewish mob, or
the cold brutality of the heathen soldiery, or the cowardly injustice
of Pilate? So, my brethren, we must not leave ourselves out of the
company of those who made Jesus to suffer and nailed Him to His
Cross. Only by humble, contrite acknowledgment of our part in
this tragedy of suffering love can we make some reparation to
His Sacred Heart; only in this attitude of mind, the right attitude
and the just attitude, can we learn aright the lesson of the seven
last words, preached from the pulpit of the Cross by Jesus, Saviour
and Teacher of men.

The sad procession to Calvary is over. A halt is called. The
Cross is laid upon the ground. Jesus is stripped of His garments.
All the wounds of the scourging burst forth afresh as the clotted
blood comes away with the vestments that are roughly torn from
His Body. He is laid upon the rough wood. Hands and feet are
stretched out. The great nails are put in position and crash
through bone and tendon with a sickening sound under the heavy
blows of the hammer. The Victim is fastened thus to the Altar of
Sacrifice. Brethren, my Catholic, Christian brethren, think of it!
What a contrast of human cruelty with divine compassion ; of man’s
depravity with the sinlessness of the Son of God ; of human
vindictiveness with divine forgiveness ; of pride with humility ; of
selfishness with self-sacrifice. Every evil passion of the human
heart is raging in that crowd which surges about the Cross, every
perfect virtue is showing in the soul of Him who is being put tc

THE FIRST WORD

5

this crudest of deaths. The mocking, curious crowd watch to
see how the condemned criminal — for, merciful God pity them !
that is all He is to them — will behave. They are all agog to catch
His last words. The last confession of a condemned man, a
murderer or such like, will always command a sale, and be read
with unhealthy interest. How does Jesus behave: what does He
say? These people are used to struggle, to curses, to impotent
ravings or abject supplications when poor wretches are being
nailed to the cross to suffer their slaves’ death. What of Jesus,
the discredited Prophet?

Listen to the Gospel record. “And when they were come to the
place which is called Calvary, they crucified Him there, and the
robbers, one on the right hand and the other on the left. And Jesus
kept saying, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”
(St. Luke xxiii, 33-34).

Listen to those words that came from Jesus on His Cross:
while the nails go in, while they raise Him up, while they consum-
mate their cruel injustice upon Him, He keeps saying (for that,
my brethren, is the literal translation of the Greek written by St.
Luke) — Jesus keeps saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do.”

Hard, proud hearts of men: you who find it so hard to forgive;
you whose pride is so easily wounded, so hardly healed ; you whose
resentment is so quickly roused, so long before it dies away; you
who cherish enmities for long years, who will not be reconciled,
who keep up disagreements, who will not take the first step to the
restoration of friendship ; who will not humble yourselves in the
least degree, who will not condescend to explain a misunderstand-
ing,— listen and learn! If ever there was one whose righteous
anger would have been justified, it was Jesus as they nailed Him
to the Cross. He had done them nothing but good ; He had spent
Himself in their service; He was suffering innocently, and He
was suffering for men.

He might have called down fire from heaven to destroy His
murderers ; He might have bidden to His side a legion of angels ;
He might, by His own power, have scattered them with a look or
a word, nay, by one act of His will. Yet, in supreme agony, He
suffers meekly; under crying injustice He has no resentment.
With all the weight of His physical and mental torture He thinks
not of Himself, meekly, pleadingly He says, “Father, forgive them.

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

for they know not what they do.” He intercedes ; He makes excuses ;
He asks that they may not be punished ; He would fain save them
from the consequences of their sin. Do I say He forgives them,
intercede for them , makes excuses for them, — not only is it for them,
but for us, for you and me, my brother and sister. For we, by our
many sins, are in the same case as the murderers of Jesus and those
who stood by and approved. The guilt of that death is upon our
heads ; we are blood-guilty of the Blood of Christ. Oh, what shall
we do? Where shall we hide our heads for very shame? For when
we sinned, we knew what we were doing. The words of Jesus
cannot be applied to us so fully as to those who actually nailed
Him to the Cross. They were very ignorant. It is true that when
we sin we are for the moment blinded, by passion or covetousness,
or pride, or lust — but there is less excuse for us than there was for
them. Yet our dear Lord says of us, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.” He knows the power of temptation to
obscure our minds, of passion to blind us. Yet we can counteract
this power of blinding if we will. We have the light of faith, the
aid of grace; we need not be blind; our sin is imputable to us; it
is our own fault. We know that by it we crucify the Lord of Life,
we know the consequences of our action. Yet He makes excuse
and pleads for us ; He makes all the excuse He can ! He takes into
account to the full all our natural human weakness. But we
must not forget our responsibility, for responsibility, grave re-
sponsibility we have, when, knowing what we know, believing what
we believe, we yet sin against our God, against Jesus our dear
Saviour, of whose sufferings and bitter death our sins are the true
cause.

And, as this is so, since by our sins we have crucified the Lord
of Life, the great lesson that He teaches in this first word from the
Cross is surely most needful for us. It is the lesson of forgiveness ;
or, full and free forgiveness of enemies, of all who have done us
wrong. It would not have been possible for this lesson to be more
strongly, more persuasively urged than it is by our divine Lord
speaking under those circumstances, in those surroundings which
I have already recalled to your minds. Innocent, He forgives His
unjust accusers ; all harmless, nay, their greatest benefactor, He
pleads for those who are overwhelming Him with injuries, giving
them true life, He forgives them His death

By word and example He teaches us to forgive : by words whose

THE FIRST WORD

7

force, spoken when they were spoken, must surely be irresistible,
by an example of forgiveness without example in the world’s
history. Saints have imitated that example. Oh, that we too may
imitate it. Since He has thus forgiven us — for, remember always,
it was for us too that He prayed — since He has thus forgiven us
who owe Him ten thousand talents, shall we not forgive our fellow-
servant who owes us perhaps less than a hundred pence? There
is another motive. Since we by sin have so grievously injured Him,
our sovereign Lord and God, do we not owe Him reparation.
He has told us what reparation we can make; what reparation is
most pleasing to Him. And in this, again, He shows forth His
divine unselfishness and charity. “If you would please Me,” He
says, “do good to others.” “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of
these, my brethren, you do it unto Me.” And especially to show
us how pleasing to Him is forgiveness, “Judge not” He tells us,
“and you shall not be judged.” “Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy.” “If you will forgive men their offenses,
your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offenses.” “Love
your enemies, do good to them that hate you. Bless those that
curse you, and pray for those that calumniate you.” Such is the
teaching of Jesus, summed up in His own sublime example, when
He cried out again and again, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do.”

This is difficult, indeed, for human nature; hard for our pride,
humiliating to our self-esteem. But who can resist the word and
the example of Jesus that we have thought upon to-day? Who,
with that before his eyes, can harden his heart, and say, “No, my
Lord and Master, notwithstanding Thy own blessed example, I
cannot and will not bring myself to foster it. I will not forgive ;
I will not lay aside my anger and resentment. I was unjustly
treated, that person had no right to behave in such a wav, I did
not deserve it ; it is too much ; I cannot be reconciled, I will not
make friends. I know that Thy injuries, Thy sufferings, the in-
justice Thou didst endure were far greater than anything that has
fallen to my lot ; I know, too, that I, myself, inflicted these things
upon Thee — and Thou art ready and willing to forgive me — but
I will not forgive; it is too difficult.”

Brethren, there may be many among you who have something
to forgive which you have not forgiven, someone to be reconciled
with whom still you are holding at a distance. If that is so, you

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

are really saying those things to Jesus; you are refusing Him what
He asks, in spite of all He has done for you, in spite of the example
we have been looking upon together. Will you refuse Him still?
Will you go on in pride ?nd hardness of heart? Will you go on
saying from day to day, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
them that trespass against us”? If you do act thus, can you hope
that the loving prayer of Jesus, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do” will avail for you. Oh, my brethren, be
not so foolish ; be not so hard-hearted ; be not so ungrateful to
that dear Saviour who suffered for you, and in the midst of
His sufferings uttered that prayer for you. What would the
cold indifference of those Roman soldiers be compared with your
cold hard-hearted indifference to Jesus if you refuse to others the
forgiveness which Jesus asks you to give them?

Let it not be, my brethren. Give to the Sacred Heart of our dear
Lord the consolation of knowing that His supreme example of
unselfish forgiveness has not been in vain for you, but that now,
without delay, in grateful acknowledgment of His goodness to
you, you will forgive, even as you have been forgiven, unhesitat-
ingly, freely, and without reserve.

THE SECOND WORD

9

The Second Word

“Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.” — St.
Luke xxiii, 43.

SYNOPSIS. —Christ hanging on the Cross: the Cross henceforth to be the
glory of Christians. First visible fruit of the Crucifixion was the cotv-
version and salvation of a sinner. Contemplate the scene. Jesus and the
two thieves. The parting of the garments: the behavior of the soldiers ,
the crowd, the priests and scribes. Their blasphemies, taunts and jeers.
One of the robbers joins with them in reviling Jesus. What a scene of
suffering and cruelty. We should have pitied Jesus had He been only an
ordinary man unjustly punished. What when it is God-made-Man who
suffers, and suffers for us? One was there upon whom it dawned that
Jesus was more than an ordinary man. Who was it? One of the two
condemned criminals. His speech to his fellow robber ; what it involved
for him; the process in his mind; his courage in speaking out what he
felt. His new-found virtues — faith, hope and charity; circumstances all
against the exercise of these three virtues. His confession of faith:
“Lord, remember me when thou shaft come into thy kingdom.” His re-
ward— the second word from the Cross.

The lesson for us: no sinner hopeless; holiness to be gained by all.
Exhortation to sinners to turn to Jesus. Exhortation to all to realize:
that the reward of the good thief is open to us. If we turn to Him, then
some day it will be said to us: “Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt
be with Me in Paradise.”

Our divine Saviour has been nailed to the Cross; the Cross
itself has been lifted up and set firmly in its place, a sign of
salvation henceforth to all the world; from that moment, instead
of being an object of horror, the mark, like the gallows, of indelible
disgrace, the Cross of Jesus is to be the most glorious of all
standards, the sign of all that is most lovely and desirable, the
emblem of an eternal hope, the strength of martyrs, the stimulus
of courage in suffering, the effective motive of patience, giving
fortitude in life and sure confidence in death, perseverance to
saints and repentance to sinners.

Repentance to sinners! Ah, my dear brethren in Christ, what a
consolation it is to us to know that the very first visible fruit of
the raising up of Jesus on the Cross was the conversion and salva-
tion of a sinner ! We will contemplate now together this great
wonder of divine compassion and mercy, this ever-memorable
proof of the power of divine grace and of the love of Jesus for
men over sinful human hearts. Thank God, though so wonderful,
the conversion that we shall meditate upon to-day does not stand

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

alone; it is typical — the first of a series that shall never end whilst
the world lasts; a service of mighty works of grace done by Jesus
and by the power of His holy Cross in the souls of men, in that
invisible world of spiritual happenings — the minds and hearts and
wills of human beings.

Jesus hangs there. Beside Him are two robbers, crucified with
Him; condemned, doubtless, for deeds of violence and brigandage.
To watch the condemned men four soldiers of the Roman guard
are left, according to the customary regulations. The Roman law
allowed the soldiers employed in superintending executions such
spoils as they could secure from the persons of the condemned.
These men, therefore, proceeded to divide amongst them our
blessed Lord’s garments of which He had been stripped, — His
tunic and mantle. The mantle, being made in several pieces, was
easily divided; not so the tunic. This was woven in one piece,
and rather than spoil the material of which it was made, by rending
it, the soldiers cast lots for its possession. Thus was fulfilled,
in the most exact way, the ancient prophecy of the Psalmist,
'‘They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture
they cast lots” (Ps. xxi, 19).

In the meantime, the crowd waited to gaze curiously upon the
dying agonies of Jesus and the two malefactors. Many were there
from mere curiosity. But it was the hour of seeming triumph
for the enemies of the Christ; and these, too, crowded about the
Cross, and loaded their most innocent victim with all kinds of cruel
taunts, vile jeers and abuse. “They that passed by,” St. Mark
tells us (xv, 29 seq.), “blasphemed Him, wagging their heads, and
saying: “Ah thou that destroyest (as thou didst boast) the
temple of God and in three days buildest it up again, save thyself,
coming down from the cross.’ ” And the chief priests and scribes,
collected together in delighted triumph over their long put-off
success, gloat over their now defeated opponent, saying to one
another, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save”; and, with
bitter scorn and irony “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come
down now from the cross that we may see and believe” (xv, 31-32).
A pretty Christ ! Indeed, a famous king of Israel He makes, hang-
ing there with His fit associates — for brethren, nothing less than
this was the awful blasphemy which scarcely we dare transcribe
thus in its naked hideous meaning, that they conceived in their
wicked hearts and uttered with their lips. Worse than this, they

THE SECOND WORD

ii

even dare to challenge God Himself to come to the deliverance of
Jesus, blaspheming the love of the Father for His only-begotten
Son : “He put His trust in God ; if God loves Him, let Him deliver
Him, for He said ‘I am the Son of God’ ” — such, dear brethren, is
the literal translation of the words of St. Matthew who records
this terrible blasphemy. At first the general mass of curious
sight-seers standing about seems to have been neutral or indiffer-
ent, but the mad exulting derision of the priests and scribes infected
them also, and they began to join in the jeers and taunts that these
were casting at our blessed Lord. One of the soldiers mockingly
holds up towards the divine Sufferer a cup of wine mixed with
water with which the guards were regaling themselves, crying out
at the same time: “If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself”
(St. Luke xxiii, 37). And the crowds begin to call out also, as
we have seen St. Mark tells us, “come down from the cross!
save thyself !” And even one of the robbers, despite his own misery
and pain, is infected with the general feeling and blasphemes Him,
saying: “If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us” (St. Luke
xxiii, 39).

My brethren, what a scene is here of undeserved suffering, of
human cruelty, of despicable triumph over a seeming fallen foe!
Often the worst of men will refrain from taunting a vanquished
and discomfited enemy. It is not so with the enemies of Jesus.
He shall taste his punishment to the very dregs; no bitterness of
stinging reproach shall be spared Him; no ambition of His (as
they conceive it) that has broken down, no rash boast (as they
count it) that He has ever uttered, no former deed of power and
mercy that He has done — all to enhance His influence, as they
would have it, all to make Himself a name, all to further His pre-
sumptuous projects as a religious Teacher, as a Ruler, as the pre-
tended Deliverer of His nation — not one of these things, but,
with deliberately cruel intent and malice aforethought, shall he
cast up at Him now that He is apparently at their mercy. We
should have pitied Him, dear brethren, had He been but an ordinary
man, the history of whose goodness and undeserved sufferings had
come down to us; we should have reflected upon the extremities
of cruelty to which envy and injured pride and lust of power, and
the triumphant opposition of vested interests to any reform that
touches them, could degrade men in the persons of those priests and
scribes. But when it is God-made-Man, the All-Perfect, the

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Sinless, the Innocent, when it is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lover
and Saviour of men who for men , for us, is suffering these things
at the hands of His own creatures — then, oh my brethren — what
life is long enough to fathom the wonder of these things, the suffer-
ings of our God in human flesh, the anguish of that supremely
tender Heart, the piercing agony of the strokes which the blind
ingratitude of those He had benefited and was still benefiting dealt
upon His most sensitive human soul?

Brethren, there was one there upon whom it dawned, as he
looked and listened, that this was more than a Man who was
suffering thus. Who was it ? One of the priests who was pious and
more compassionate than the rest? One of the scribes, who, per-
chance, began to see in the events that passed before him the
evident fulfilment of prophecies in the Old Testament Scriptures
that were his proper study? One of the crowd gathered there,
enlightened by some secret sympathy and gifted with more than
common insight by reason of a just and tender heart? None of
these. God the Son is recognized, is saluted, is adored by one
brought lower than the lowest riffraff that has gathered there to
gloat upon dying agonies and bleeding flesh and poor rent human
frames : He is recognized by one of the poor wretches who have
been crucified with Him ; and for all time the dying thief is to be a
picture, too tender, too full of the pathos of love and suffering and
repentance ever to be adequately imaged in thought or words of
man. For it is no mere human emotion that has seized him, but
the transforming power and efficacy of God’s holy grace; grace
won by the divine Sufferer who hangs besides him, grace red with
the Blood that flows from the Cross of Jesus and bedews not alone
the hard ground beneath, but the soul of that poor sinful man.

His companion in misery had begun, as we have seen, to revile
our blessed Lord with the others: “If thou be Christ, save thyself
and us” — such was the bitter taunt that fell from his dying lips.
“But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying: Neither dost
thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation?
And we indeed, justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds :
but this man hath done no evil” (St. Luke xxiii, 40-41).

We will pause a little over these words, significative of a great
change that had taken place in the soul of Dismas, the good thief.
Grace had touched his soul. He had been thinking, as he hung
there. The first word of Jesus, “Father, forgive them, for they

THE SECOND WORD

13

know not what they do,” had sunk into his heart; he had watched
Jesus, and had been struck by the meekness and patience and for-
givingness of the divine Sufferer. The thought came back to him
of the God whom he had forsaken, of whom he had learned in child-
hood, whom he had been taught to serve. He repented: he was
ready now to bear witness to that God, and to the innocence of
Him who hung by his side. He knew well that a perfect storm of
jeers and taunts would arise from those who should hear him —
him, a condemned thief, “he to set up now as a just man, to pre-
sume to rebuke his fellow criminal! He was as bad as the other,
how could he dare to rebuke him? And now he is defending the
false Nazarene; much good may that do him!” But Dismas is
not deterred; he has found a new kind of courage, noi the
courage of a brigand, but the courage of a Christian, the courage
that in the martyrs was to astonish the world. So, courageously
he speaks : “Do you not fear God, my brother, seeing that you are
under the same sentence? Yet for us, this is what we deserve,
it is the just reward of our deeds; but this man here hath done
nothing that is even unseemly.” This poor criminal was vouchsafed
a wonderful insight into the character of Jesus; for the words that
are translated in our version, “this man has done no evil,” mean
in the Greek, not merely this men hath done no evil, but this man
hath done nothing out of place ” nothing in any way worthy even
of slight blame. What a testimony, dear brethren, to the influence
of the sinlessness of Jesus ; what a testimony is the whole occurrence
to the power of His grace and the efficacy of His Sacred Passion?
But there is more: the dying thief has acquired a new virtue —
it is faith. He believes in Jesus, he accepts His Messiahship, he
acknowledges Him as a King! How marvelous was the faith that
made him do this under such circumstances! Did anyone ever
look less like a King, a Saviour, a Messias sent by God, than this
poor discredited Prophet from Nazareth whose schemes of reform
and of deliverance have to all appearances ended in this complete
failure? But Dismas believes in Jesus; and not only that, he hopes
in Jesus. What a time for hope ! Did anything look more hopeless
than the position in which both he and Jesus found themselves?
And his whole bearing shows that he has begun also to love Jesus :
he loves Him enough to bear for His sake all the taunts and jeers
that are levelled at him for his brave witness to what he knows
now is the truth — -to the sinlessness, the divine mission, the power.

14

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

the kingship of Jesus of Nazareth. And, dying as he is, he turns
to the Christ dying also beside him, and he speaks those wonderful
words, “Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy king-
dom” (St. Luke xxiii, 42).

This confession of faith drew from our divine Lord the Second
Word from the Cross. “Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee,
this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise” (v. 43). Oh, glorious
words, sealing at once his pardon and his perseverance! How
many of God’s saints even have been thus assured of their salva-
tion? Oh, reward unspeakably great! He asks that some day he
may find a place in the kingdom of Jesus; Jesus promises him
heaven that very day itself. Before the sun shall have set upon that
Day of Days, Dismas will be with Him in Heaven, pardoned,
ransomed, clothed in the bright whiteness of the vesture of eternal
glory. Such is the generosity of God in rewarding; such is the
marvelous power of true repentance. What a change : from
wickedness to sanctity, from disgrace to unutterable glory, from
misery to eternal peace, from shame and reproach to everlasting
praise and reward ! And it is all the work of grace and of repen-
tance; of the first grace used and co-operated with, of repentance
brought about by that first grace and winning other graces, till in
so brief a time the condemned criminal is changed into a saint
of God.

Brethren, who dare say now of any sinner that there is no hope for
him? Who dare say now that holiness and perfection are
out of reach or impossible? This Second Word of Jesus from the
Cross forbids such thoughts to us. Only trust Him, only set about
to do something for Him, only use the graces He gives you now,
and you may hope for anything: for pardon, for more and more
grace, for holiness, for eternal glory. Say not that it is too late
for you to begin to think of holiness. It was not too late, even at
that eleventh hour, for Jesus to save and to sanctify the dying
thief. God’s arm is not shortened, the streams of His grace are
not dried up. He will do the same for you as He did for Dismas
if you, too, will turn with all your hearts and souls to Him. Rouse up
then your faith and hope and love. Bear witness bravely by your
fearless profession of our holy religion to the faith you have in
Jesus whose religion it is. And you poor sinners, if any there be
here, loved of the Sacred Heart, do not that Sacred Heart the
injustice of despairing of His mercy, or of being discouraged.

THE SECOND WORD

15

He will forgive you, He will save you. Come to Him! He will
ask you to do something for Him, to make necessary effort —
but see what the dying thief was willing to do; see what was his
reward exceeding great. Brethren, all of you, try to realize that
the same heaven where Dismas is with Jesus is still offered to you,
is still open to you. Jesus has won it for you; it is your inheri-
tance and your right. He will give you all the grace you need to
get there. Come to Him then, with faith and hope and love.
Faith is easier for you than it was for the good thief: you are
not called upon to hope even against hope as he did: and you
know more of Jesus, of His goodness, His mercy and His power
than Dismas did when he met his Lord on Calvary. Will you
not love that dear Saviour who died for you? Come to Him
with true repentance in your hearts, and say to Him, every day,
“Lord, remember me,” and one day, when you are about to meet
Him, cleansed by His Blood, absolved from your sins, purified by
repentance, strengthened for your last journey by the Holy Viati-
cum of His Body and Blood, anointed with the Holy Oil, your
temporal punishment cancelled by holy indulgences and by your
patient suffering upon your sick-bed, which will be your cross,
you, too, if you will and if you strive now, even before the
sun has set upon your last earthly day, may have heard from the
lips of Jesus those most gracious words, “Amen, I say unto thee,
this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise/*

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

16

The Third Word

“When Jesus, therefore, had seen His mother and the disciple standing
whom He loved, He saith to His mother: ‘Woman, behold thy son!’ After
that He said to the disciple: ‘Behold thy mother!’ ” — St. John xix, 26, 27.

SYNOPSIS. — The third word from the Cross. Short recapitulation of last
Sunday’s discourse. The darkness. Mary and the others approach the
Cross. The mutual sufferings of Jesus and Mary; Mary queen and chief
of martyrs. Jesus speaks the third word. The tradition of the Church as
to the meaning of this third word. Its wider application. “ Mary our
Mother .” This a fundamental truth of the Christian religion. Mary’s
motherhood of us based on and following from her motherhood of Jesus
Jesus our brother. Our higher sonship of God through Him; the sonship
of adoption. This involves a real new relationship to God — the communi-
cation of a divine life from God to us. Jesus is our life, and this life
comes to us through Mary who cooperates with God in bringing the new
life into the world. Hence, she truly brings us forth to God spiritually;
is our spiritual mother. Can it be that she has not a mother’s love for us?
No. She cooperated in our redemption: she does so still by her interces-
sion. Love her , venerate her , take her to your hearts as St. John “ took
her into his own.*’

We are to meditate to-day, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, upon
the Third Word or saying of our blessed Lord uttered by Him from
His Cross. It is a word for which we should thank God every day
of our lives; a word spoken by Jesus, our dear Saviour, for us,
as well as for those who first heard it ; a word which He spoke with
us in rnind.

It was about the sixth hour of the day, that is about noon,
probably a little before noon, that our blessed Saviour was raised
up on that Cross from which, as He had said, He was to draw all
men unto Him. We contemplated last Sunday the earlier events
of that long agony of three hours which ensued upon the cruci-
fixion. We listened to the jeers and taunts of the priests and
scribes; we saw how they roused the crowd of persons who stood
about in idle curiosity or indifference, stirring up hostility to-
wards the divine Sufferer ; how this hostility affected the
mind even of one of our divine Lord’s fellow-sufferers, who,
in spite of, or rather in desperation at his own pains, joined in the
torrent of abuse that was being hurled at Jesus. We witnessed
in spirit the marvelous conversion of Dismas; we heard his cry
of faith and hope and love, and the wonderful word of Jesus
promising him a reward unspeakable, “This day thou shalt be with

THE THIRD WORD

17

Me in Paradise.” And now an extraordinary and terrifying event
takes place. From the sixth hour onward strange shadows began
to gather about the earth, a preternatural darkness, rising up about
Calvary as if to hide from the face of day the shameful deed that
was there being done, spreading over the whole face of the land.
As this darkness came on the crowd about the Cross began to
thin, terrified at this unwonted happening. Thus a clear space was
left around the Cross of Jesus, and a little company of persons
drew near to Him. They were the Mother of Jesus, that blessed
Virgin Mother, now indeed the Queen of Martyrs, suffering in
her pure and loving soul every agonizing pang that her well-
beloved Son was feeling: there was her sister, Mary, the wife of
Cleophas; there was St. Mary Magdalene and John, the Disciple
whom Jesus loved. Jesus looks down upon them. Unutterable
anguish and suffering still awaits Him in those hours of thick
darkness — a deep mystery of pain such as never man suffered
before nor since ; pain of body, anguish of soul. And not the least
of His agonies is in the knowledge of His own dear Mother’s
unutterable grief at seeing Him there upon the Cross. Now, indeed,
the sword is piercing His Mother’s heart ; now, indeed, her
heart and the Heart of Jesus, united in suffering, each knowing
and feeling the suffering of the other, are a very ocean of sorrow,
their mutual love, as it is greater beyond compare than any that we
can know, sharpening inexpressibly the anguish that they feel.
We do know and we contemplate sometimes, perhaps, with terror,
the almost illimitable capacity of the human heart for suffering.
What must have been the suffering of the Hearts of Jesus and
Mary then ! Saints in their meditations can go a little way into
that mystery of anguish : Holy Church strives, in her hymns and
offices to tell us somewhat of that deep and awful grief. Especially
in that beautiful sequence, the Stabat Mater, does she strive to
depict the sorrows of Mary.

“Quis est homo qui non fleret
Christi matrem si videret
In tanto supplicio?

Quis non posset contristari
Piam Matrem contemplari
Dolentem cum Filio?”

If even our cold hearts are moved when we meditate upon the
sufferings of Jesus ; if even we can compassionate the sorrows of

*8 THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

Mary standing beneath the Cross of her dying Son, oh, what
must have been the keen agony that pierced the Sacred Heart of
Jesus as He looked upon her enduring such pangs of grief as we
cannot imagine; what must have been her grief who could enter
into, and did willingly enter into, with entire sympathy and fellow-
feeling — the sympathy and fellow-feeling of one who shared in
it all to the full — every sorrow that then oppressed the Heart of
Jesus, every pang and agony that He was enduring?

She is His own Mother : she stands there and sees Him suff ering,
outraged, forsaken, slowly dying of pain and thirst and grief.
He will not, it is true, give up His spirit till He wills; but He
endures all the pangs of that slow, agonizing, cruelly deliberate
on-coming of death which crucifixion meant. Mary, His Mother,
watches this. She is enlightened by her wonderful love to enter
into it all ; she is enlightened by that love, and by the Holy Spirit,
to know and to understand and to feel all His dreadful mental
anguish — and above all that anguish which He then felt at the
weight of the whole world’s sins laid upon His shoulders — that
terrible mountain of loathsome sin, so loathsome to His all-pure
soul that He had cried out in the Garden for that chalice at least
to pass from Him — she understands it all, she knows how His
soul is shrinking from that contact. He has offered Himself
willingly for men to His Father to hear willingly all the sufferings
laid upon Him by God in atonement for the sins of the world — but
worst of all is the close presence of sin, that mystery of sin and
evil in contact with the All-Holy, sinless Himself, yet borne down
by the sins of all men, past and present and yet to come. In all
this Mary shares, so that, as a spiritual writer has said, “three times
over is she crucified with Jesus — crucified by being present; cruci-
fied by her mother’s love; crucified by her holiness and horror
of sin.” For, just as she is herself holy and sinless is she able more
than any other to understand the agony of the soul of Jesus at the
presence of our iniquities that God has laid upon Him.

And as she stands there, Jesus looks down upon her. And from
her He looks to the beloved disciple who is by her side. He looks
sorrowfully, lovingly, from one to the other. He foresees
those years that His Mother must live upon earth after He
has ascended to His Father. He would provide her with a guard-
ian. He says to her, indicating the beloved Apostle Saint John,
“'Woman, behold# thy son” ; and then, looking upon His faithful

THE THIRD WORD

*9

Apostle He says, “Son, behold thy Mother.” “And from that
hour,” St. John himself tells us, “the disciple took her to his own”
(St. John xix, 27), that is, to his own abode, to dwell with him.

Brethren, not without a deep meaning did our divine Lord utter
this third word from the Cross. The constant tradition of the
Church and of holy writers has put upon these expressions
of Jesus to His blessed Mother and the beloved Disciple an
interpretation which makes them mean more than they would
appear to mean on the surface, and gives to them an appli-
cation far wider than the application immediately visible at the
time our blessed Saviour gave utterance to them. The Holy
Church of God, taught by the same Holy Spirit who inspired
St. John to record this saying in his Gospel, knows that it had,
in the mind of Jesus when He uttered it, and in the intention of the
Holy Spirit when He moved the Evangelist to write it, this
deeper meaning and wider application. Thus she has ever held
that St. John represented at the moment all the redeemed of
Christ for whom He shed His Blood; that she who is the Mother
of God is also the Mother of men, our dear Mother, having her
place and part in the redemption worked by her divine Son.

So, then, He truly was saying to her — “Woman, behold thy son,
and behold all thy children whom I give to thee henceforth”; and
He was saying to us, “My children, for whom I die, behold your
Mother whom I give to you.” Brethren, even if our divine Lord
had never said these words, we still should have known, we should
have been able to gather from Catholic doctrine that Mary is
our true spiritual mother. It is a truth of Christianity that the
blessed Mother of Jesus is our Mother also. Those who have
refused to recognize the maternal office of Mary towards men have
shorn the Christian religion of one of its most glorious, most
helpful and most consoling doctrines — not a doctrine invented in
later times, not a doctrine added to the faith delivered to the saints,
but a doctrine that runs through and is a part and parcel of the
whole scheme of redemption as it was in the mind of God from
all eternity, and as it has been carried out by Him in time.

The motherhood of Mary in relation to the redeemed of her
Son, the fact that she is truly our spiritual mother, is rooted and
grounded in the fact that she is the Mother of Jesus, God-made-
Man, our divine Redeemer. He is the Son of God from all eternity,
the only begotten of the Father. By taking flesh He became our

20

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

Brother, one of our race. We also were already sons of God in
a sense, by creation. But our divine Lord, by becoming Man,
has made possible for us a higher sonship, by which we are sons
of God in a higher way. For He is the Son of God, not by creation,
but because He possesses the same Divine Nature as His Father,
which is communicated to Him from all eternity; and by His
divine sanctifying grace He gives to us a higher sonship than that
which we have by our creation, a sonship of adoption, by which
we are adopted into the divine family, and made no longer servants
only, but adopted sons of our heavenly Father. And, dear
brethren, this adoption into the family of God involves more than
the mere legal notion that is contained in the idea of human
adoption. Human adoption does not make any real kinship, any
real relationship, between him who adopts and him who is adopted :
but the adoption of grace does: it sets up a real relationship with
God; a new and higher relationship. Grace gives us a new divine
life that is communicated to us by God; a life that the Apostle
St. Peter goes so far as to call “a participation of the divine
nature.” And this is through Jesus Christ, through His Incar-
nation, Birth, Passion and Death.

“Grace to you and peace be accomplished,” writes St. Peter, “in
the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord — by whom He
hath given us most great and precious promises : that by these you
may be made participators of the divine nature” (II. Pet. i, 2 and 4).
Jesus, God-made-Man, by His grace becomes the life of our souls,
we are new creatures in Him. — “Put on the new man,” says the holy
Apostle St. Paul, “who according to God is created in justice and
holiness of truth” (Eph. iv, 24).

And who was it, I ask you, my dear brethren, who brought to
us, who introduced into the world Jesus, our new life, the very
life of our souls? It was none other than Mary, the ever-blessed
Mother of God. So then, just as a mother co-operates in giving
physical and natural life to her children, so did Mary co-operate
with God in giving to us Jesus who is the supernatural life of our
souls. Truly, then, and in actual fact, by reason of her true mother-
hood of Jesus, she is our dear mother also ; and as by divine grace
the Father of Jesus becomes our Father also, so too His Mother,
has become our Mother, the second Eve, mother of all the living, of
all those to whom is given the spiritual life of which she was the
chosen channel to bring it to men. “She has brought us to our second

THE THIRD WORD

21

and spiritual birth, she was made the source of our life, and became
our Mother in becoming the Mother of Jesus Christ” (Bishop
Bellord: “Meditations on Christian Dogma,” Vol. II, p. 353).

So, then, Mary has for us all a mother’s love. Could it be
otherwise? If the mother who gives bodily life to her children
is bound to them by that fact in a relationship of undying love,
shall it not be so with her who by her willing co-operation brought
to us Jesus, our Life, and so was the chosen instrument used by
God for our spiritual re-birth. We know that it is so: we know that
she is still our Mother. When she stood beneath the Cross and
willingly offered up her Son for our salvation, willingly endured
her awful martyrdom of sorrow, she had in mind the redeemed
of Jesus. When she heard that word “Woman, behold thy son,”
she accepted not only the beloved disciple but us also to be her
children. Then she took upon her the office of Mother of the
Church, Mother of the Mystical Body of her Son to whose Body
of flesh she had given life. Thus, as the first Eve co-operated
in our fall, she, the second Eve, co-operated in our redemption.
This is her place in the scheme of salvation. It was God’s holy
will and divine Wisdom to overcome the evil one by the same
weapons with which he had gained his passing victory over our
first parents. As we were ruined with the co-operation of the
woman, who tempted Adam the head of our race to that sin by
which we fell in him, so God would and did restore us with the
co-operation of another woman, acting with the second Adam, the
Head of our race restored. As we fell in Adam, yet not without
the sad concurrence and co-operation of Eve, so, indeed, by Jesus
are we redeemed, and not by Mary, yet not without her willing
and active co-operation.

And, dear brethren, are we to suppose that now, — now that she
reigns gloriously in heaven with her Son, she has ceased to take
interest in her spiritual children ; has ceased to co-operate with Him
in the work of our salvation. By no means ! Still she loves us ; still
she aids in the work of our salvation ; still she spiritually brings forth
Jesus in us, and brings us forth to God. And this she does by
virtue of her position and office given to her in those words,
“Woman, behold thy son,” belonging to her as I have shown you,
by the very fact that she is the Mother of Jesus. And her work
for us now is done by intercession. “I have read” — in Holy
Scripture — “says a modern writer, “that Christ can no more suffer

s 2 THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

or die ; but I have never read that He has laid aside His filial love
for His Mother. I have read that death has lost its empire over
Him; but I have never read that His Mother has resigned her
empire of love over Him. He indeed is her King, but she is the
King’s Mother, and while she is His subject — the first subject of
His kingdom, she is also His best-beloved, and He gives to her
freely the sweet empire of love over His Heart” (Paraphrased
from Mgr. Gay, apud V. D. Artaud, La Vraie Piete, Paris, 1911).

Go to her then, my brethren, with the fullest confidence. Open
your hearts to her sweet and powerful influence. As the belovad
disciple “took her unto his own,” so do you take her to your hearts.
Love her always, venerate her, invoke her, and she will be to you
a mother, she will bring you forth to God, she will form Jesus
within your souls through the Holy Spirit whose choicest gifts
and graces she will obtain for you by her prayers to Jesus her Son.

THE FOURTH WORD

25

The Fourth Word

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: * . . .

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me.’ ” — St. Matt, xxvii, 46.

SYNOPSIS. — The darkness on Calvary; the agonies of Jesus during the three
hours — the sad history of man’s fall , and of men’s sins till the end of
time passes before His mind; the sins of Catholics, too. The lifting of
the physical darkness is followed by the descent of the darkness of the
dereliction upon the soul of Jesus. Look, on Him as the daylight returns!
Who would know Him as the Son of God and Son of Mary? The fourth
word: “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” What does it
mean? It is a mystery; yet saints and doctors of the Church can lead us
a little way into the understanding of this mystery.

Extract from a modern writer ( the Abbe Fouard) explaining the mean-
ing of Christ’s dereliction:

“We must remember that Jesus actually bore the load of our crimes;
He ‘ became sin’ for our sakes. In that hour God abandoned .Him to the
distress of this contact with v sin. His vision of the multitude of the
damned, for whom He knew that He was dying in vain. _ The mystery of
the Dereliction part of the deep mystery of the Incarnation. Both in the
Incarnation and the Dereliction the divinity remained inviolable.”

One thing all through is clear — it was our sins that caused this terrible
abandonment.

“Him who knew no sin” God “ hath made sin for us, that we might
be made the justice of God in Him.”

Exhortation. — At the time of temptation to remember this dereliction
of Jesus, and to spare Him the added weight of a new sin , consoling His
sacred Heart by our faithfulness.

The holy Gospel tells us that from the sixth hour, soon after
our blessed Lord was lifted up on His Cross, until the ninth hour,
shortly before His death, a terrible and appalling darkness covered
the land, and shut out from view the hill of Calvary and the
tragedy that was being enacted thereon. Who can tell what Jesus
suffered during the hours of that darkness? Even had the bright
light of the sun shone upon the scene, only the outward part of
that tragedy would have been visible: the most terrible element
thereof, the secret unnameable agonies of the soul of Jesus would
still have been hidden: what they were we never can completely
know. Helped by the word of Scripture and by the enlightened
meditations of saints, to whom God has revealed these things in
prayer or ecstasy, we can know something of the mental sufferings
of our divine Lord during this time. Then the whole sad history
of man’s fall and man’s sin passed through His mind. He saw
the original loving intentions of God, in creating man to serve

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS •

24

Him, love Him, glorify Him and be forever blessed by the pos-
session of Him. He saw the temptation and most unhappy fall
of our first parents. He saw the whole flood of sin and misery
and unhappiness, of evil and disease and death that was let loose
upon the world by that first miserable act of disobedience. He
heard the cries of the murdered, the wailings of infants born in
poverty and degradation; the foolish mirth of the profligate, the
wretched merry-making of drunkards. He contemplated the scenes
of war and rapine, heard the groans and cries of the wounded
and the dying. He saw the ravages of plagues and sickness, the
“thousand ills that flesh is heir to.” Worse still, He saw and
knew in all its sad deformity the corruption of souls in sin, the
defacement of God’s image and likeness in which they had been
created, the wilful rejection of grace, the conscious rebellion of
sinners against God’s most holy and most righteous law, the selling
of their precious birthright as sons of God. And He saw these
things not only in souls who knew Him not as their Redeemer, to
whom His great love had not been revealed, but saw this rejection
of grace, this wilful plunging into sin on the part of Christians
and Catholics, to whom treasures of His grace and mercy have
been made known.

Brethren, He saw the evil of wilful sin in us: He saw how we,
in spite of all that He was then suffering, should oft and again
prefer the vain degrading pleasures of mortal sin to His love and
His sweet service.

As the ninth hour approached, the darkness that had covered
the land slowly lifted, and once more the rays of the sun lit up
the mount of Calvary and the three crosses that on its summit
stood out against the sky. Oh what a sight it was! Look,
brethren, look upon the sight of Jesus hanging there. Who would
know Him for the Son of God? Truly, as the Prophet foretold
“there is” now “no beauty in Him nor comeliness; and we have
seen Him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous
of Him: despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with infirmity, and his look was as it were hidden
and despised, whereupon we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath
borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows ; and we have thought
Him as it were a leper and as one struck by God and afflicted”
(Isaias liii, 2-4). Yes, brethren, who, I ask, would have known
Him then, so wounded, so smitten, brought down so low, for the

THE FOURTH WORD

25

fair Son of God and Son of Mary? Where is the beauty of that
countenance, the sweetness of that light of love divine which
shone from His eyes, which in a moment made the Magdelene a
saint and drew the tears of loving penitence from the eyes of Peter ?
Where is the grace of that form, of that Sacred Body so perfectly
moulded as the dwelling-place of the Word? Ah! how changed,
how disfigured, how defiled ! That head all bowed down in agony,
pierced with the hard thorns of the crown they had put upon Him :
those eyes closed up with blood, His body all one great wound from
head to foot, strained and stretched and racked upon the rough
wood of His Cross, hands and feet torn and mangled by the huge
nails driven through them. Ah, my friends and fellow sinners,
what a sight was unveiled when that curtain of merciful darkness
was drawn aside! But these bodily sufferings, this agonizing
torture and rigorous punishment of the Body of Jesus were little
compared with the agonies of His most loving, most sensitive soul.
Upon that blessed Soul of His there descends now a mysterious
and awful darkness of spirit. He, the All-Holy Son of the Father,
in some dread and scrutable way feels Himself forsaken by God;
and in the abandonment of extremest desolation He cries out with
a loud voice “Eli, Eli , lamma sabachthani ” “My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

“This lament,” says a modern writer (The Abbe Fouard, “The
Christ the Son of God,” Eng. Trans., Vol. II, p. 336) “is the opening
of the Psalm wherein the Messiah’s passion is all predicted, —
(Psalm xxi) His strength ebbing away in streams of blood,
His burning wounds and that parching thirst of whose fierceness
the dying man alone has any knowledge.”

But what does it mean? How can the eternal Son, who is one
with His Father, be forsaken by that Father? This is indeed an
unfathomable mystery. Yet holy writers and doctors of the Church,
enlightened by the Spirit of God, have penetrated a little way into
the awful mystery of God the Son abandoned on the Cross, and
uttering that exceeding bitter cry, “My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?” The writer whom I have just quoted sums
up the teaching of these holy writers in a passage which I cannot
do better than quote to you at length, since I think it throws light
upon this subject which, although a mystery, yet, like all the sacred
mysteries of our holy religion abundantly repays our study and what
understanding of it our human minds with God’s help can attain —

26

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

repays with rich spiritual fruit that study and the understanding
which we may have by prayful, humble and devout contemplation
under the guidance of the saints.

“Never did any dying soul,” says the writer to whom I allude,
“feel as Jesus felt when now forsaken by God, because none but
He alone has ever lived with God and in God. Hanging there,
reviled by earth and rejected by heaven, He lingered in lonely
conflict with another agony like that which passed over Him
in Gethsemane, yet this time He drained the cup to the very
dregs. To gather any idea of the wretchedness which seized Him
in His present abandonment, we must remember that despite His
own innocence, Jesus, when upon the Cross, bore the actual load
of our crimes — that He actually had taken upon Himself the
wickedness of the world. And now that God had transferred to
Him all sins committed from the beginning to the end of time, these
all stood forth distinctly before His dying eyes together with their
very least circumstances. Every treacherous and revengeful deed,
the lewd and adulterous works of shame, blasphemies, slanders and
lying — all together surged their foul floods into His soul, and every
other sense was swallowed up under these torrents of iniquity.
And it was in this same hour wherein the Christ was, as it were,
overwhelmed in that first wild onslaught, that God saw fit to
withdraw His Presence from Him, as if to crush Him beneath
the weight of His vengeance. Jesus, ‘having become sin for
our sake/ being made ‘a curse and an execration’ (Gal. iii, 13)
(according to St. Paul’s expression). Jesus suffered at the hand of
God such unutterable horror as no human tongue can declare.
In that hour heaven drew away from Him into the darkness;
hell alone remained before the Saviour’s sight, — wherein was dis-
closed that never-ending despair, eternal, infinite, even as is
the God whose penalty it is.

“One lowermost depth of sorrow had still to be reached. . . *
The multitude of the damned were all marshaled before His eyes;
however unworthy, they were the members of His mystical Body,
so closely united to Him that they could not be separated from Him
without violence. And as He saw this dearly loved portion of
Himself about to be wrested from Him, Jesus felt as if He, indeed,
like them, were left destitute and reprobate forever. He mourned,
‘that the fruit of His struggles should be torn from Him; He
cried aloud that His sweat, His toils and His death were thus

THE FOURTH WORD

27

bereft of their reward; since those for whom He had suffered so
much were abandoned to everlasting perdition.’ This, then, was
what wrung from Him that mournful cry: ‘My God! My God!
dost Thou abandon Me?’ But how can we make this moment of
apparent despair to which Jesus yielded harmonize with the blessed-
ness essential to His divine personality? Herein again there is
involved an unfathomable mystery, the Mystery of the Incar-
nation. To comprehend how God the Son could speak of Himself
as forsaken by His Father,’ we should first need to explain how
the Infinite Being could take upon Himself a finite nature; for
between these two humiliations there is only a difference of degree
— the abandonment of Jesus on the Cross only continued what was
first accomplished in the Incarnation, and in these two mysteries
the Godhead remains equally inviolable. With Christ in His
anguish it was even as with those mountain chains whose white
crests pierce the clouds. Often the tempests do havoc with their
rugged sides, strewing them with the wreckage of the storm;
yet naught can trouble the snowy peaks, which, far, far above the
whirlwind’s reach, stand evermore serene and crowned with light”
(Ibid. pp. 336-338).

Although, now, dear brethren, this terrible dereliction of Jesus
is a mystery included in that deep Mystery of the Incarnation by
which, being true God and true Man, the word incarnate possesses
and exercises both divine and human operations, could suffer and
die ; though, too, it is beyond us fully to comprehend how His soul,
though ever beautiful by the direct vision of God, could yet feel
most truly and really the sense of utter forsakenness and abandon-
ment by His Eternal Father which caused that bitter lament to
come forth from His overburdened and anguished Heart, yet this
is clear, and this is what concerns us most and concerns us per-
sonally— that it was our sins, of thought, word, deed and of omis-
sion, that caused His awful dereliction and desolation of soul in
that moment of supreme agony. The contact, the real contact
with that mountain of vileness represented by the sins of the whole
world, a heap of sin in which every sin, yours and mine, and every
single sin of yours and mine, stood out distinctly with all its own
particular vileness and ingratitude — this contact, from which His
all-holy soul shudderingly shrank, yet might not escape, was the
cause of His horror; while to the Father, at that moment what was
He? He was changed as it were into sin, changed, as bearing

28

THE SEVEN EAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

our sins in His own Body, into that which God hates and must
hate with eternal unrelenting hatred wherever it exists — for, as
St. Paul writes, “Him, who knew no sin,” God “hath made sin for
us, that we might be made the justice of God in Him” (II. Cor.
v, 21).

Ah, brethren! when you are tempted to forsake Jesus by sin,
think how He was forsaken, given up to the hideous clutches of vile
sin for you. Pause before you add another to that great innumer-
able multitude of sins that oppressed Him. For, though now He
can suffer no more, yet in that moment, knowing all the future,
He knew whether in the moment of trial you would stand firm and
be faithful, or whether with cruel ingratitude you would wound
His Sacred Heart again, refusing Him any comfort, adding to His
bitter desolation. And, though His actual suffering for your every
act of sin is in the past, yet truly in that past, at that bitter hour
of His Passion, it was your free act and wilful determination of
sinning now , clearly foreseen then, that desolated His most loving
soul. Stay then your hand; do not that murderous act of sin!
Rather give joy to the Sacred Heart of Him who loves you by
your faithfulness, and so lift at least something from the weight
of sin that bore Him down. He will not forget you: He will
number you amongst His friends ; He will thank you one day that
you spared Him this act of sin to which the devil has tempted
you. Think thus and act thus in every temptation, and thus the
Apostle’s words will come true to you, and through Him who was
“made sin” for us you will be “'made the justice” — the righteousness,
the holiness of God.

THE FIFTH WORD

29

The Fifth Word

“I thirst.” — St. John xix, 28.

SYNOPSIS. — The sufferings of Jesus surpassed all other sufferings known
on earth. Before we consider the “fifth word ” we will review the suffer-
ings of His Passion in general. How they surpassed all others. We do
not speak of the pains of hell nor of purgatory, but of earth. We do not
mean that Crucifixion, in itself, is the most painful of deaths possible. But
our blessed Lord suffered both in body and mind: (a) His Body was
so formed that physical suffering was specially painful to Him. ( b ) His
intellect had a capacity beyond all others to enter into suffering. Let us
devoutly explore the sufferings of Jesus.

I. He suffered from all classes of men. Jews, Gentiles', the rich and
powerful, the mob, from women as well as men, priests and lay people,
friends and enemies.

II. Every class of sin was committed against Him: “ the concupiscence
of the fiesh; the concupiscence of the eyes, the pride of life.” These
exemplified in His three Judges, Caiphas ( Pride of Life), Herod ( Con-
cupiscence of the Flesh). Pilate ( Concupiscence of the Eyes). These
classes of sin are constantly repeated in our own times. Examples. Re-
member that Jesus knew and felt oH these sins on His Passion; our sins.

III. There was no species of suffering that He did not endure, both
in body and soul, in all His senses.

IV. He suffered to extremity because He willed to, in order to satisfy
and prove His love. His thirst. Its physical characteristics : a type of
His thirst for souls. Development of this thought. Exhortation not to
deny our Lord that return of love, that recognition for which He thirsted.

There is no doubt, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, that the
sufferings of our divine Lord in His Sacred Passion surpassed in
intensity all other sufferings known on earth before or since; and
before we contemplate that special bitter suffering which He Him-
self has revealed to us in this short word from the Cross, sitio,
“I thirst,” it will be well for us to contemplate for a while in general
those sufferings which He willed to endure for our salvation.

I have said that no earthly suffering ever has surpassed or will
surpass the sufferings of Jesus. I do not speak of any but suffering
endured on earth. We are not considering the sufferings of the
lost, nor those of the souls in Purgatory. And when we say that
our blessed Lord’s sufferings surpass all other suffering upon earth,
we do not mean that the form of death inflicted upon Him — namely,
crucifixion — is absolutely the most painful kind of death a man
can suffer. Crucifixion is indeed one of the most lingering and
painful of deaths that the ingenuity of human cruelty ever has
devised : the racking of every limb, the terrible exhaustion, the

3°

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

impossibility of finding the least ease or respite, the insupportable
weariness of the victim’s drooping head — all this intensified in
our blessed Lord’s case by His previous ill-treatment and suffering
— made crucifixion a most dreadful infliction. But there are
tortures physically more painful.

Yet it is true, nevertheless, that no one has ever suffered or even
could suffer like Jesus did. We will see why this was so. We
must remember that our blessed Lord suffered not only in body
but in mind. We must remember that His physical sufferings
were more terrible and poignant to Him than they would have been
to any other. Never was there a body so delicately sensible, by
reason of its very perfection, to every physical feeling as the
Body of Jesus. Moreover, physical suffering is intensified by
alertness and perfection of intellect and the capacity to enter into
it and feel it, and drain the bitter cup to the full with an unmitigated
taste of its contents. Never was there an intellect so capable of
penetrating to its depths the suffering He endured, of surrender-
ing itself to every pang, missing nothing, escaping nothing, as the
intellect of the Word-made-Flesh. None like He, whose Sacred
Heart is the very Fount of divine Charity, could so feel and so
shrink from the evil of sin which was all about Him, which He
had taken upon Himself ; none could appreciate as He could the
sufferings of the lost which He saw before Him and which op-
pressed Him with unutterable wo.

Let us, then, devoutly explore the sufferings of our dear Master
and Saviour as far as we can, lovingly, reverently, with sorrow and
with compassion. And first, the sufferings of Jesus surpass all
others upon earth in this, that He suffered at the hands of all
classes of men : all classes either took an active part in His death
or added to His sufferings. Flis own people, the Jews, Gentiles
also ; the rich and powerful as well as the ignorant mob ; persons
of both sexes alike, priests and lay people, His own friends, apostles
and disciples, those who, having sat at His feast and at one time
believed in Him but afterwards forsook Him, as those did, who
could not accept His teaching concerning the holy Eucharist, or
who fled from Him at the time of His passion, in the hour of
His most dreadful extremity. To Him, indeed, forsaken and be-
trayed by those nearest and dearest to Him, belongs that pathetic
and prophetic outcry of King David betrayed by his friend Achi-
tophel, “If my enemy had reviled me, I would verily have borne

THE FIFTH WORD

31

with it, and if he that hated me had spoken great things against
me, I would perhaps have hidden myself from him : but thou, a
man of one mind, my guide and my familiar” (Ps. liv, 13-14).

Moreover, every class of sin was committed against the divine
Sufferer. Spiritual writers have classified sins under three head-
ings, following the Apostle St. John, who says “all that is in the
world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of
the eyes, and the pride of life” (II. St. John, 16). And this uni-
versality of character in the sins committed against Jesus is es-
pecially shown in. the three tribunals before which He was brought.
Thus in the conduct of Caiphas and the priests we see exemplified
the pride of life — they feared to lose their place and influence
through the successful preaching and miracles of Jesus. “The chief
priests, therefore,” St. John tells us, “and the Pharisees gathered
a council, and said, what do we, for this man doth many miracles?
If we let him alone so, all will believe in him” (St. John xi, 47-48).
And again the same Evangelist records how the Pharisees “said
among themselves : Do you see that we prevail nothing ? Behold
the whole world is gone after him” (Ibid, xii, 19).

And so, to save themselves, to secure their vested interests,
they pronounced Him worthy of death. In Herod, another of our
blessed Lord’s judges, we see the concupiscence of the flesh. He
it was who had taken to himself his brother Philip’s wife, and had
murdered St. John the Baptist for his courageous denunciation of
this incestuous crime. He, when the Christ was brought before
him, rejoiced, thinking that his worldly curiosity might be gratified
by the working of some miracle. Disappointed, he made a mock
of Jesus, causing Him to be clothed, with the refinement of cruel
irony, in the white robe worn amongst the Romans by approved
competitors for a public office. Lastly, in Pilate we see the con-
cupiscence of the eyes, the sin, that is, of human respect, the fear
of offending those upon whose favor he depended for his position
and prestige. He knew that Jesus was innocent, but he was afraid
to act up to this conviction by ordering His discharge. He was con-
quered by the subtle threat of the Jews. “If thou release this man,
thou art not Caesar’s friend” (St. John xix, 12).

Ah, my dear brethren, do we not now see these sins repeatedly
committed against our blessed Lord in our own days? Does not
the pride of life, the exaltation of human reason and pride against
all that is of God wage relentless war against Christ and His holy

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THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

Church, striving to set up the kingdom of this world, of “reason”
and of “nature,” against the kingdom of heaven? Are not sins
of impurity and luxuriousness, of prodigal extravagance in the
pursuit of pleasure and excitement and new sensations a character-
istic of our time? Need we go further than our own country to
see these things which are the concupiscence of the flesh carried
out to a monstrous degree; so that, alas, a certain class of rich
people amongst us are a bye-word in other countries for the
bizarre extravagances of their social entertainments, of their
pastimes and sinful pleasures? And are there not many, like
Pilate, who would like to be good Catholics and profess their
religion and practise their religion? They know they ought: they
would willingly do so — but it does not pay ; it is unfashionable ;
they would be laughed at; they would not retain the favor of the
powers that be; they would lose money, place and consideration.
So, like Pilate, they let Jesus go to the wall. Remember always,
dear brethren, when you are meditating, as we are now, upon the
passion of our divine Saviour, that the sins committed against Him
e.t the actual time of His suffering were not the only ones that
pierced His Sacred Heart with grief ; but that He felt then every sin
that ever had been and that ever will be done against Him. Those
that actually accompanied the passion are typical only, the visible
part of that huge volume of sin that then weighed Him down.
Remember also — never forget, — that our personal sins, yours,
brethren, and mine, added to that volume each its separate, distinct
and individual part that smote upon the tender soul of the Incar-
nate One.

Again, there was no species of suffering that Jesus did not
endure. The betrayal of faithless, ungrateful friends, of those
whom He had greatly benefited; the loss of His good name and
honor. Scorn, insults and contempt. The loss of all He possessed,
down to the very clothes He wore. He suffered in body, in every
part of His Body, and in all His senses; from grievous wounds
and soreness, from the extension of His sacred limbs, from un-
utterable physical weariness and loss of sleep, from the sights
about Him, from witnessing His mother’s grief, from the hearing
of blasphemies, from the taste of the gall and vinegar, from the
hard wood of the cross, from the feeling of blows and stripes, from
hunger and thirst and the faintness of very death itself, death which
He would not allow to free Him till He had endured to the bitter

THE FIFTH WORD

33

end all that He had set Himself to suffer. He suffered unspeak-
ably, with unimagined and untold pain, in His most blessed soul.
Sadness, sickening weariness of spirit, fear and shrinking, shudder-
ing terror and bitterest desolation — all these came upon Him, so
that the Psalmist’s words again apply most truly of all to Jesus:
“The waters are come in, even to my soul; I stick fast in the mire
of the deep, and there is no sure standing. I am come into the
depth of the sea; and a tempest hath overwhelmed me” (Ps.
lxviii, 1-3).

There is one more reason, my dear brethren, besides those I
have already given you, why the sufferings of Jesus our Saviour
surpassed any other earthly suffering. Being God, His human will
was completely under the control of His divine will, one with the
will of His Father. His human will, moreover, had complete
command over all His feelings. He could let Himself suffer
as much or as little as He willed. He could open His soul
wide to the onrush of the flood of pain and grief that came towards
Him, or He could close it, and admit only so much as He pleased.
In truth, being God, the least suffering of His would have sufficed
to redeem the world. But this was not the measure by which He
measured His sufferings. He willed to make them, as far as
finite sufferings could be, commensurate with His love for us.
Hence He put no bound to His sufferings; He allowed no mitiga-
tion.

He permitted that great cataract of suffering to fall upon Him
in all its vastness and with all its force. He did so because
He loves us so greatly, and that He might prove His love to the
most sceptical, to the most hard-hearted, and to those timidly in-
credulous souls who find it hard to realize His love.

There is no doubt, then, that the sufferings of Jesus were greater
than anything that any other has suffered or could suffer upon earth.
Rightly did the Prophet, looking forward with inspired vision, cry
out that He is the “Man of sorrows” (Is. liii, 3).

Note. — This sermon, so far, is based on the treatment of the sufferings of
Christ by Cardinal Billot, S.J. De V erbo Incarnato; Thesis xlvii.

Through all this agony of piled up sufferings, only once did our
divine Lord give expression to the feelings of physical distress.
It was when He spoke that mournful word, “/ thirst ”

Who can conceive the terrible pain which wrung this cry from

34

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS FROM THE CROSS

His sacred lips? It is well known that a raging burning thirst
is one of the worst pains of crucifixion. We read of a young
Turk, crucified at Damascus in 1247, that the “worst of all his
sufferings were the pangs of thirst.” “I heard this,” says the writer
who records it, “from an eye-witness, who told me that he turned
his eyes hither and thither, beseeching that someone would give
him a mouthful of water” (See Fouard, “The Christ the Son of
God,” Vol. II, pp. 338, 339, Eng. Trans.). Holy writers say that
our divine Lord told us of this special suffering because, while
His other physical sufferings are apparent, this was hidden, and we
might not have realized it. Certainly also it brings out into relief
the truth of the humanity of God-made-Man. This thirst of Jesus
has been the inspiration for many a victory over the enslaving
vice of intemperance ; for many an act of courageous mortification.
Brethren, does it not appeal to you? To think of Jesus thus thirst-
ing and longing for a drop of water. To think of Him seeing the
heartless soldiers drinking their wine beneath the Cross, and He
thirsting, unable to obtain the least alleviation of His pain. And
when He moans out that sad cry “I thirst,” they give Him vinegar,
upon a sponge. This “vinegar” was in reality some of the bitter
and highly spiced wine that the guard around the cross were drink-
ing. One of them was moved with pity, and gave to the divine
Sufferer a few drops. They were not enough, not nearly enough,
to produce any real alleviation, and this act of mercy only added
to the bitterness of the passion, for at once there went up a shout
of remonstrance, “Let be ! Let be ! And see if Elias will come and
save him.”

But this physical thirst was a type of that divine thirst and
longing which filled the Heart of our blessed Saviour — the thirst and
longing for souls ; that loving thirst for their salvation, for the sal-
vation of all — of those who ultimately by their own wilful fault
would be lost as well as of those who should be saved; that thirst
for men’s salvation that made Him eagerly run to drink in suffering
like a river. For your soul and mine, dear brethren, He thirsted
then ; that His love might be satisfied, that He might have us with
Him for eternity, and might for all eternity lavish His love upon us
— and we will not! Often we have refused, often we have risked
our souls, have snatched them from Him by sin. All this He knew,
and thirsted for some return of love, if only a little vinegar upon a
sponge — some recognition, some gratitude, some small effort to

THE FIFTH WORD

35

be better, some compassion with His sufferings for us, some re-
membrance of Him as we walk along the road of life.

Oh, brethren, be not any more even harder-hearted than the poor
ignorant soldier who gave Him a little bitter drink upon a sponge.
Repent of your hard refusal of love and of remembrance: give to
our dear thirsting Lord the love He longs for; be no longer, never
be again, the cause of His heart-burning thirst for some return of
love. When you are tempted to sin, think of His sad word “I
thirst’’ ; I thirst for your faithful love, now, my child, in the
hour of trial which will show whether you are faithful and true
to Me. If you are leading a bad or an indifferent life, think, O
my brother, think, O my sister, of the heart-thirst of Jesus for your
amendment, for your happiness, for your salvation. Let His
most bitter thirst nerve you and strengthen you to root out evil
from your hearts and lives and give Him the consolation of
knowing that for you His thirst was not in vain, but that, having
suffered for you, His undying love shall have the joy and satis-
faction of embracing you as one of those precious souls saved by
Him, one of the fruits of His passion, one who has given Him to
drink the draughts of pure love here on earth, and shall be filled
with the wine of His eternal love in heaven.

36

LENTEN SERMONS

The Sixth Word

“It is consummated.” — St. John xix, 30.

SYNOPSIS — We are to contemplate the death-bed of God-made-Man * His
sufferings are nearly over; there remains but the crowning act — the
willing acceptance of death.

Jesus cries out: “ It is consummated .”

His sufferings and death a means to an end: the means of accom-
plishing the work He came to do — the work of our salvation.

We will go over this work and what it involves, and will ask three
questions:

I. How has the Death on the Cross saved us?

II. What was it about the death of Jesus that caused our salvation?

III. How are the benefits of Christ’s death to be brought across the
centuries to each individual soul?

I. How did the death of the Son of God-made-Man save us?

To answer this question we ask another, vis.: — How did the human
race stand in relation to God after sin? Man found himself confronted
by an offended and insulted God; adequate recompense for the insult
was impossible. We were all in this position. Who could make repa-
ration? Only God-made-Man could do it.

Christ has saved us, firstly, by making adequate satisfaction; secondly,
by meriting redemption; thirdly, by meriting the restoration of the gifts
of grace and perseverance.

II. What was it about the Passion and Death of Christ that made it
the cause of our salvation?

First, the willing obedience of His death; but we must remember
that this was the obedience of God. Importance of not losing sight of
the true doctrine of the Incarnation.

III. How are the benefits of the Passion brought to us? By the
Church which Christ “purchased with His Own Blood.”

Conclusion. Well might Jesus say, “It is consummated ” — the work
of Salvation; the payment of the price of Redemption ; satisfaction to
God; the winning back of Grace; provision for all future souls.

Exhortation to devout thankfulness and perseverance.

We are to watch in spirit to-day, my dear brethren in Jesus
Christ, the most solemn and the most impressive death-bed scene
that was ever enacted upon earth. It is the death-bed of God-made-
Man; of Him who is the Lord and Giver of Life, who chooses,
for us men and for our salvation, to subject Himself in His human
nature to the universal law of mortality that lies upon His creatures.
It is the death of Jesus that we are to witness. The long agony is
nearly over; those lengthened and awful sufferings that He willed
to go through, drinking to the dregs the bitter cup He had set Him-
self to drain, have nearly come to their conclusion. They have been
enough to have killed Him before this, but death may not lay
its cold hand upon Him till He wills it. And He wills it not till He

THE SIXTH WORD

37

has suffered all, till He has endured to the very utmost, till He has
drunk even to surfeiting the chalice of pain — so that He might
prove His love, so that no man might have any excuse for doubting
that immense love which expressed itself and proved itself in that
way in which love most convincingly and most unanswerably
expresses and proves itself — by willing suffering on behalf of the
beloved.

And now that suffering is to have its crown put upon it; it
is to go on even unto death. Jesus Himself had said to the dis-
ciples, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down
his life for his friends” (St. John, xv, 13). Now He is about to
give this grand, crowning, and final proof of love for us: for us
He is about to die. The crowning act of death is to set the seal
upon the sufferings that have gone before. They were the painful
road by which He went to death; death is to be their completion.
It is the supreme consummation of all His sufferings by death
that, by the appointment of God, is to save the world. And the
death of Jesus is to be an act of obedience to this appointment of
God: for “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death,
even to the death of the cross” (Phil, ii, 8).

And the moment has come. All else is finished. There remains
but this final act. And so, as St. John tells us, “Jesus . . . said: It
is consummated. And bowing His head, He gave up the ghost”
(St. John xix, 30). We learn from the other Evangelists that our
Divine Lord’s last breath was sent forth in one great cry, which is
the last word from the Cross, “Father, into Thy hands I commend
my spirit.” But both this last word and the sixth word which we
are meditating upon to-day, followed quickly one upon another,
so that these two words, the sixth and the seventh, belong to the
last earthly moments of our Blessed Saviour.

“It is finished,” or “It is consummated.” It was certainly a cry of
satisfaction. “I have a baptism,” Jesus had said, “wherewith I am
to be baptised : and how am I straitened until it be accomplished ?”
(St. Luke xii, 50). He had longed for its accomplishment, the
accomplishment of His baptism of blood and suffering; now it was
over, all had been rigorously inflicted, not one pang had been
missed, not one stroke of agony witheld; truly He could say, “It
is finished,” as He bowed His head in death.

But all these sufferings were but a means to an end, as His death
itself was a means to an end. They were the means of accomplish-

38

LENTEN SERMONS

ing a work, the work that the Word came from His throne in high
Heaven to do. And in His dying moment, Jesus could truly say of
His appointed work, “It is finished,” “it is consummated,” that is,
it is complete.

To-day, as we stand by the Cross and watch for one last breath
of our dear Master, we will in our mind go over that work which
now He has finished ; for, my dear brethren, it concerns each single
one of us most nearly, more nearly than anything else that ever has
been done to us, or for us, or regarding us by anyone in this
world.

What, then, is the work that was accomplished by the Passion
and death of Jesus? It may be summed up in one word: it is the
work of our salvation. But when we have said that, we have not
said all. For we ask how the Death on the Cross has saved
us: we may ask what was it about the death of Jesus that made it
the cause of our salvation : we may ask also how the benefit of the
Passion and Death of Christ is to be brought across the centuries
that intervene, from Calvary to each individual soul.

First then, how did the death of the Son of God-made-Man
save us?

To answer this question we will first ask another, and it is this:
How did the human race stand in relation to God after sin? And
we must remember, as we inquire into this, that but for the
salvation wrought by Christ upon the Cross, we should every one
of us be in the position in which sin placed the whole human race.

First, then, after sin man found himself confronted by an offended
and insulted God. Man, by sin, commits an act in itself and so
far as the sinner’s own powers go, irreparable. Offense, injury, and
insult are the greater according to the dignity and rank of the one
who is offended. By sin man, a worm of earth, has insulted the
infinite Majesty of the Almighty God. There is the measure of sin!
Again, if we have offended anyone, recompense is due, and that
recompense or satisfaction must be adequate. This means that the
offender must be in a position to offer something that will please
the offended person at least as much as the offence displeased
him. Now such a satisfaction man could never offer to God. It
is impossible for a man, or all men together, to do anything that
will please God as much as sin displeases Him. The extreme
hatred of God for sin, which is the pole of absolute opposition,
of utter contrast with and difference from the Divine Sanctity,

THE SIXTH WORD

39

is immeasureable by human thought, and inexpressible in human
words. Not even the eternal fire of hell can adequately por-
tray the just displeasure that God, by His very nature, must have
for sin. And we have all sinned ; we have all done this dread thing,
and come under the Divine wrath and anger. Who could make
adequate atonement? Who could satisfy for the offence? None
but God-made-Man. By the Cross He has done it, making satisfac-
tion for us, and, as St. Paul says, “blotting out the handwriting of
the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He
hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it to the Cross”
(Coloss, ii, 14).

If, then, we ask how the sufferings and death of Jesus have saved
us, the answer is, by making adequate satisfaction to the offended
Majesty of God for the offence of sin. The willing obedience of
Jesus in His Passion, His willing suffering, the shedding of His
Precious Blood, His oblation of Himself, His acceptance of death in
the spirit of obedience, constituted an act of religion, of worship of
God, of sacrifice, that was more pleasing to the Divine Majesty, on
account of the infinite dignity of the Person who performed it,
than sin was displeasing to that same Majesty of God.

Again, the sufferings and death of Jesus merited our Redemption.
By a just ordinance of God, man by yielding to the devil was
brought into servitude and slavery to the evil one. By His
suffering and death Christ our Lord paid the price of our ransom
from this slavery — a dreadful slavery that put us under the devil’s
power in this world, and condemned us to be his for eternity. This
price Jesus has paid, not indeed to Satan, who has no strict rights
over us, but to God, by whose just decree sinners are abandoned to
the greatest enemy of God and men. By the shedding of the
Precious Blood of Christ, we are restored to the glorious liberty
as the sons of God, to the heirship of Heaven, to the sonship of
our Heavenly Father.

Lastly, by His Passion our Divine Lord merited for us the
restoration of all those gifts of Divine grace by which we are
first placed upon the way of salvation by being raised to the
supernatural state of grace and charity, and secondly, kept in
that state and enabled to persevere to the end and to be saved.
It is because of the merit of His most precious death that Jesus
is of right the supreme source of grace to use: it is because of
that same merit that there flows from Him, as from a fountain.

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LENTEN SERMONS

that grace which He applies to our souls through the agency of
His Church, His ministers, His Sacraments and the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass.

We will ask now our second question, what was it about the death
of Jesus that made it the effective cause of our salvation? This
question has already in part been answered by what I have said. It
was the willing obedience with which Christ suffered that constituted
the great value of His satisfaction and merit in God’s sight. It was
through His obedience that our disobedience was atoned for, the
insult of that disobedience made up for, the offended Majesty of
God appeased. And the obedient death of Christ was sufficient
to do this because it was the act, the obedience, the death, not merely
of a man, but of a Divine Person. It is of the greatest importance
that we should never lose sight of this great Catholic truth, that He
who died for us upon the Cross was true God, a Divine Person,
the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. To forget this, to
become unsound, as so many outside the Catholic Church are
unsound in these days, upon the great truth of the Incarnation, the
fact that Jesus Christ, having two natures, the nature of God and
the nature of man, is yet one Person only, and that Person the
Person of God the Son Himself — to lose sight of this, or to say
otherwise, is to take away the value of the Passion. If He who
died for us upon the Cross had not been God; if His every act
had not been the act of a Divine Person, using His human nature
as an instrument of His Divinity in which and by which to suffer
and to die, we should not have been saved, the price of Redemption
would not have been paid, the infinite value of every act of Jesus
would not have existed.

Finally, my dear brethren, we will answer the question “how are
the benefits of the Passion and Death of Christ to be brought across
the centuries to every soul to the end of time?” St. Paul answered
this question when he said to the clergy of Ephesus: “Take heed
to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath
placed you bishops, to rule the Church of God, which He hath
purchased with His own Blood” (Acts xx, 28). This was the
completion of Christ’s work of suffering — the birth, as it were from
His own wounded side — even as Eve our first mother came from
the side of Adam — of our true mother the Holy Catholic Church,
the bride of Jesus. In that Holy Church, called also by St. Paul
again and again the Body of Christ, Our Blessed Saviour lives

THE SIXTH WORD .

4i

and moves and walks still by His own indwelling Spirit and by
His sacramental Presence. She is red with His Precious Blood,
Her robe of glory: Her Sacraments are holy vessels by which that
Blood is applied to our souls, and its merits given for our salvation.
Well might Jesus say “it is finished,” “it is consummated,” “all is
completed.” The work of salvation was accomplished, the price
was paid, satisfaction was made to God, the graces needed by all
men were won, nothing was left undone that should be necessary
to carry on the work of salvation even to the end of the world.

How should we devoutly thank God every day for this great
accomplishment summed up in those words of hope for every one
of us, “it is consummated” ! For then Jesus spoke of you and
me, of your salvation and mine. “The salvation of this one and
that is accomplished — of this one and that one whom I love as
if there were no other to love, for whom I have done all this as
truly as if there were no other to do it for.” “He loved me”
says St. Paul, “and delivered Himself for me” (Gal. ii, 20), and
every one of us can truly say the same.

May our most merciful and loving Jesus grant, and may the
prayers of His dear Mother Mary obtain, that when we come to
die we too may be able to say “it is consummated,” the work of my
salvation is accomplished, I have co-operated with what Christ my
Saviour has done for me, I have not lost the fruits of His great
salvation by my own fault. I have persevered by His merciful help
and grace, and I know that He will give to me the crown of ever-
lasting glory!

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LENTEN SERMONS

The Seventh Word

“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” — St. Luke xxiii, 46.

SYNOPSIS. — Prom the pulpit of the Cross our Lord will say one more
word, a word that will teach us how to die. St. Luke tells us that
“ crying with a loud voice,” He said: “Father, into Thy hands I commend
my spirit .” St. Matthew and St. Mark mention only the loud cry;
St. John alone mentions the bowing of His head. Explanation of this.

The loud cry of Jesus was one of the miracles of His death. The
opinion of St. Thomas. Certainly this last word is proof that His giving
up the ghost — the act of dying — was, like all His sufferings, a voluntary
act. So, too, with the bowing of His head. Isaias. Words from
Bishop Bellord.

The marvellous change in the way of meeting death introduced amongst
men by this word and example of Jesus. Hitherto death almost universally
was met with horror and dismay: not only with physical shrinking, bul
with mental rebellion; when not with brutalised indifference. There
was no idea of meeting death with a tranquil mind, much less with joy.
The death of the Christian following the example of the death of
Christ. Pray that your death may be tranquil and happy, and that you
may be able trustfully to commend your soul to God. Remember that
this needs forming the habit in life and so living that trust may not be
presumption.

Another effect of the death of Christ has been the willing sacrifice
of life, for the faith, or for others.

We can learn also from this last word a lesson of Faith. Jesus
seemed a failure ; it seemed as if He were abandoned by God and man.
Yet He says confidently and loudly “Father!” With His last breath
He proclaims once more His Divine Sonship. Conversion by this of
the Centurion and others. Oh, blessed death of Jesus! Oh, blessed
Word of Jesus! Praise and thank Him. May His example convert
our hearts.

One more lesson. According to the Fathers Christ, in this last
Word, commended the Church and the members of the Church to His
Father. A consoling thought for the hour of death.

We have gone together over the Seven Words. Pray that the remem-
brance of their lessons may abide with us in life and death.

We are to meditate to-day, dear brethren in Jesus Christ, upon
the last word of Our Divine Saviour spoken from the Cross. He
has uttered that saying of pregnant meaning that we considered in
my last discourse. It is consummated, but from the pulpit of the
Cross upon which He is lifted up to draw all men unto Himself
He will yet say one more Word for our instruction and for our
consolation, a word that will teach us how to die, even as His
whole life and the other words Fie spoke both from the Cross and
in all His preaching teach us how to live.

“And Jesus,” writes the Evangelist St. Luke, “crying with a

THE SEVENTH WORD

43

loud voice, said: Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit —
and saying this, He gave up the ghost.” -(St. Luke xxiii, 46.) St.
Matthew and St. Mark mention only the “great cry” which our
Blessed Lord gave forth. “And Jesus,” writes St. Matthew, “again
crying with a loud voice, gave up the ghost” (St. Matt, xxvii, 15).
And St. Mark also says: “Jesus, having cried out with a loud
voice, gave up the ghost” (St. Mark xv, 37). St. John, the beloved
disciple, adds another precious detail to the inspired record of this
last scene, for he tells us that Jesus “bowing His head, gave up the
ghost” (St. John xix, 30). Most of the disciples, at the moment
of the death of Jesus, were standing afar off. St. Luke, who him-
self tells us in the introduction to his Gospel that he had made
diligent inquiries from eyewitnesses of the life of our Divine Lord,
and “diligently attained to all things from the beginning” (St. Luke
i, 3), doubtless obtained his information concerning the last utter-
ance of the Saviour from one who stood close at hand, probably
from the lips of the Blessed Virgin herself. St. John, too, was
close to the Cross, and saw that Jesus had bowed His head and
was dead. The others heard only the loud cry, but not the words
uttered. Nevertheless, the Holy Ghost willed not that they should
be lost to us, so precious are they, and so full of teaching to help
to console and strengthen us in that hour when we too shall have
to render our souls to God Who gave them.

This loud cry of Jesus was in itself a miracle. It was proof that
Jesus yielded up His soul when He willed, and not before. His
Divinity, acting upon His sacred Humanity, either preserved His
bodily strength to the end in spite of all the sufferings He had
endured — not indeed lessening those sufferings, nor diminishing
the agonizing feeling of oncoming death, but rather giving to
Jesus a fuller capacity of suffering; or else, granting as some think
to be the case, that He was reduced to the last extremity of bodily
exhaustion, the Divinity gave Him a momentary access of strength
in that last moment. “In order to show,” says St. Thomas, “that
His soul was not wrested from Him by the violence of His Pas-
sion, Christ preserved His bodily nature in its full strength, so that
in the last extremity He might cry out with a loud voice: a fact
that must be reckoned among the miracles of His death.” Which-
ever of these opinions may be the truth, this last loud cry of Jesus
at the very instant of death is proof that, as St. Augustine says,
He gave up His soul, not, as others, unwillingly, but “because He

44

LENTEN SERMONS

willed, when He willed, and how He willed.” The same truth is
taught by the words of the Evangelists who say “He gave up the
ghost.” To the very end all was voluntary, even the act of dying
itself was a voluntary act of obedience. Even, according to the
fathers of the Church, the act of bowing His sacred Head was a
voluntary act; His Head did not fall because He was dead, but,
as St. John says, “bowing His Head, He gave up the ghost.” Thus
St. Chrysostom writes, “He did now bow His Head because He
was dead, but when He had bowed His Head, then He died, by
all which the Evangelist signifies that Christ was the Lord of all.”

“He was offered,” wrote Isaias in prophecy, “because it was
His own will (Isaias liii, 7). He Himself had said, “I lay down
my life that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from
me ; but I lay it down of myself : and I have power to take it up
again” (St. John x, 17, 18).

Hence, as says a modern writer (the late Bishop Bellord, “Med-
itations on Christian Dogma,” Vol. I, Medit. 45) it is to be con-
cluded that the separation of Christ’s soul from His body “was
not the result of the physical violence He endured, but of His own
direct volition. This view accords with Christ’s supremacy as Lord
of life and death, His power as God, and the fulness of deliberate
choice with which He died for us. . . . He did not die till He had
Himself pronounced the decree “Father, into Thy hands I com-
mend my spirit.” Then he allowed His bodily and mental suffer-
ings to take effect ; He suspended the divine influx which made Him
immortal; He allowed death to approach, as He had allowed the
temple-guards to seize Him in the garden.”

We will stay now a few moments, my dear brethren, to con-
sider the marvellous change in the way of meeting death which
this example of our Lord’s voluntary yielding up of His spirit has
introduced into the world. Before Jesus died upon the Cross death
was almost universally looked upon with horror and dismay. When
a man came to die, as a general rule, he met death not only with a
physical shrinking, but with unwillingness and mental rebellion
against the common lot. Some, indeed, either because their pro-
fession familiarized them with death, or because life was a misery,
met its approach with a brutalized dumb indifference. But the idea
of willing death, of a peaceful and happy death, of meeting death
with a tranquil and willing mind was a thing scarce heard of ; while
to meet death with joy and eagerness was a thing to wonder at.

THE SEVENTH WORD

45

The death of Jesus taught His followers to meet death in this way,
and from that time forward millions of Christian death-beds have
exemplified the lesson of the Master. Death, to the true Christian,
is the gate of life. With the great Apostle he can cry out triumph-
antly, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy
sting?” (I. Cor. xv, 55.) Death to him is the trustful relinquish-
ing of his soul into the hands of a good and loving Father, and
thousands upon thousands have died with the words of Jesus upon
their lips, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Dear brethren, pray now to God that your death may be happy,
tranquil, peaceful; that from your heart you may be able, at that
dread moment, to commend your souls lovingly and trustfully into
the hands of God. But remember that if you would do that when
you come to die, you must form the habit now of contemplating
that last scene of your earthly life, and of trusting God now and
of so living in His holy sight that your trust may not be a presump-
tion. He who wishes to die well must strive to live well. The
man who passes his life in indifference, in forgetfulness of God
and in sin cannot expect to be able to die in peace with Christ’s
words upon his lips.

Miracles of grace, death-bed conversions do, indeed, happen
sometimes; but we have no right to presume upon them. It is
highly dangerous to do so; and, moreover, it is the height of
meanness towards our good God to put off our repentance and
amendment to the last, offering the shreds and tatters of a wasted
life to Him who gave all His life, all His toils and sufferings for
us, and for us endured the pangs of death.

Another effect in the world of the great example of Christ’s
death has been the willing sacrifice of their lives by thousands of
Christians who have died either as martyrs for the faith or as
martyrs of charity, giving their lives for their brethren. Think
of all the martyrs, think of heroic missionaries, think of priests
and nuns who have gone fearlessly into the midst of plague and
pestilence and lost their lives in consequence; think of those holy
men and women in every age who have worn themselves out for
the love of Jesus and of the souls for whom Jesus died. They drew
their strength in meeting death from the loving contemplation of
the death of Jesus on the Cross.

But let us now go back to the thought of our dear Saviour utter-
ing that loud last cry. There is another lesson that we can learn —

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LENTEN SERMONS

a lesson of faith. It seemed at that moment as if the life of Jesus
was ending in utter failure. He seemed abandoned by God and
man alike. He Himself had cried out with exceeding bitterness in
mysterious and awful desolation, “My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?” But now, with a grand unconquerable con-
fidence, He turns to His Eternal Father and cries, “Father, into
Thy hands I commend my spirit.” He was using, and purposely
using, words from the Old Testament, words of the sweet singer
of Israel from the 30th Psalm. He would show to those around
that, in spite of all appearance, He truly was the Son of God, the
Son of that God who had chosen the Jewish people out of the
nations of the earth to be the depositaries of His revelation and
the nation in which the Redeemer should be born. So He proclaims
Himself with His very last breath to be what He had always
claimed to be, the true Son of the living God. And this cry of
triumphant confidence, this proclamation of the truth of His Divine
Sonship at once converted the centurion who was in command
of the Roman guard around the Cross. “Now the centurion,”
writes St. Luke, “seeing what was done, glorified God, saying:
Indeed this was a just man” (St. Luke xxiii, 47). Others, too,
were brought to believe in Him; for, says St. Matthew, “the cen-
turion and they that were with him watching Jesus . . . were sore
afraid, saying: Indeed this was the Son of God” (St. Matt, xxvii,
54) ; and St. Luke tells us how all the multitude of them that were
come together to that sight and saw the things that were done,
returned striking their breasts.

Oh most blessed death of Jesus, that has taken away death’s
sting for us and robbed the grave of its grim victory ! Oh blessed
death that has opened the way to eternal life, has thrown the
effulgence of heavenly light around the dying bed. Oh blessed
word of Jesus, that strengthens our hearts and fills them with
serene and joyful confidence even at the terrible moment of death.
Praise Jesus, my dearest brethren, that He has left us this grand
word of hope and strength and surest trust to gladden our depart-
ing from this world. Oh may this word deepen our faith in Him,
in His Divinity, His Eternal Sonship: may it convert our hearts
from worldliness and carelessness and sin, as it converted the cen-
turion and those with him.

Oh Jesus, Eternal Son of God, true God of true God, grant that
this Thy dying word may be upon our dying lips and bring us to
Thyself

THE SEVENTH WORD

4 7

One more lesson, my dear brethren, from this last word from
the Cross. The Fathers tell us that when Jesus commended His
spirit to the Father, He was also commending to God His whole
Church, and the souls of all who should be one with Him in the
unity of His mystical Body. St. Athanasius writes : “When
He says, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, by that
word He commits to the keeping of His Father all men who
through Him and in Him are to be brought to the life of grace;
for we are members of Him according to the words of the Apostle
“you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii, 28). So then, when
we come to die, this word of Jesus, uttered on our behalf as well
as His own, will plead for us with God, and will present us before
the Throne of our Maker with a recommendation to mercy, so
strong a recommendation that nothing but our own pertinacious
refusal of grace up to the last can make that recommendation fail.

We have gone now together, my dear brethren, over the seven
words of Jesus from the Cross. May God grant, and may His own
Blessed Mother, who suffered so great a martyrdom at the foot of
that Cross, pray for us, that the remembrance of these words and
of their holy lessons may never depart from our minds. May they
be with us in life, on our lips and in our hearts; may we practice
faithfully what we have learnt from them, and so shall a pious
and happy death crown our labors and our souls shall be received
into our eternal heavenly home to be with God for ever, to praise
eternally Him who suffered such things for us, to thank Him
endlessly with inexhaustible love for that great love which He has
shown to us, that love by which, “when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God,” through which also “where sin abounded, grace
did more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death, so also grace
might reign by justice unto life everlasting, through Jesus Christ
our Lord.” (Rom. v, 10, 20, 21.)

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